DailyRounds- App for Doctors Aims to Cement their Market Lead in Doctor Network Space

One of the main challenges is to maintain the quality of the content shared as more doctors join and submit on the platform. The editorial review for content quality becomes costlier as the number of submissions increase

DailyRounds is a global network that enables Doctors to engage in sharing and learning medical content. Doctors need to keep updated on the latest medical developments and treatment guidelines. Case based learning (clinical cases) is the best way to go about doing that. The traditional methods for case discussions are CME conferences and medical journals, but the cost and time doctors need to spend often prevent otherwise busy doctors from taking full advantage of those mediums. DailyRounds solves these problems by their simple and intuitive mobile app.

With over 250,000 doctors on the platform, DailyRounds is now the largest network of doctors in India and one of the largest in the world. It has been vouched for by doctors as the one app that they always keep on their phones.

Journey So Far What started in 2014 as a personal project of Dr. Deepu has seen DailyRounds growing to be one of the most widely used medical app – from Syrian refugee camps to Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Sebin was working with an IIT Madras team on a few healthcare projects and he found that engineers collaborate effortlessly via channels like stackoverflow. He decided to build a platform for Doctors to collaborate. But it took a few months to really implement this idea. By late 2014 the beta app started gaining popularity among Doctors. The other co-founders Priyank Choubey and Nimmi Cherian came onboard, the team was accepted to GSF accelerator and a first round of funding was raised, led by Kae Capital.What makes DailyRounds Unique?Doctors share and discuss unique and rare cases on DailyRounds. Each case gets a ‘verified correct diagnosis’ within 24 hours of submission. This case library and discussions help doctors keep updated even after they have left the medical colleges. The DailyRounds library has replaced traditional medical journals, drug handbooks and pocket notes in many specialties. (These are typical content of a doctor's handbag that the company says they are replacing.)

“On average, a medical doctor takes 30 key decisions per day. It ranges from what drug to prescribe, when to do a surgery, what device to use to when to discharge a patient. We positively influence those decisions there by having a direct impact on healthcare outcomes. From Day 1 DailyRounds has helped Doctors provide better care”, Dr. Sebin explains.

Currently there are over 250,000 users on the platform, spread across the globe, with majority of the users from Indian Subcontinent. There is a three level verification process for all the Doctors. This is to make sure only verified and approved Doctors will be taking part in discussions and case sharing.

The company also believes in simple solutions to a complex problem. For example, the WHO TB treatment guidelines published on the app reached 80,000 Doctors in a single day via the “practice changing update” push notification. When you take into account the number of patients who will receive the updated TB treatment because of that, a push notification turns into a high impact activity.

The app also has an extensive and comprehensively curated Drug Database and ECG Database that doctors can use as quick references.

DailyRounds is also unique by the fact that it is a product built by Doctors, for Doctors (a team of 8 Doctors , 6 of whom have left clinical practices to build this, including the founder). It is also the highest rated Medical app globally, with a rating of 4.7. The team takes pride in having a product built completely in India, but adopted and loved by Doctors across the world.

The company raised their first seed round in 2015 from Kae Capital, Beenext, Powerhouse Ventures and GSFGlobal. A second seed round came in 2016, led by Accel Partners with participation from Beenext, Akusa Holdings, Japan and Powerhouse Ventures.

The company has multiple channels that they look for generating revenue and monetizing the valuable network that they have. E-Detailing, Sponsored cases from Pharma and Medical Devices industry, Subscriptions and Job postings are some of the obvious monetizing models. There is also the plan to launch several specialty apps in collaboration with industry partners. A number of specialty apps like Pediatric Rounds, Cardiology Rounds and Radiology Rounds are already available in the app stores.

There are several challenges though, that the company faces. Another challenge is to successfully and continuously engage the high worth group of specialists on the specialty apps. This again is a costly process.

But the opportunity at hand, with being able to provide access to a high value group like doctors is immense and the company understands that. They believe they have the right strategies to benefit from this opportunity. The company aims to be the number one choice for any industry that requires digital access to doctors.